


silver in your lungs

by driedvoices



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Violent Thoughts, a darkness around your heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:13:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1331518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedvoices/pseuds/driedvoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silver in your lungs

**Author's Note:**

> Two middle fingers RAISED TO THE FUCKING SKY FOR YOU, JEFF DAVIES. In all seriousness, **content warning for discussion of mental health and violent imaginings**. Slightly AU for 3B in that it ignores most everything except the promo material.

She tricks herself into thinking she doesn't feel it, at first.

Allison's never had trouble keeping herself centered. Her mother was always at her back, ready to reprimand whenever her gaze wandered for too long. Victoria Argent had no patience for idleness. The only expression Allison can recall on her face is singlemindedness, the most minute variations for affection and distaste. She should remember more, like the color of her hair underneath the dye or the coolness of her hands. What she does remember: Here's your arm. There's the target. Focus.

Kate whispers _let go_ in her ear and she does without questioning, revels in how easy it is, the release in her muscles running thick and sweet. The arrow slides from her fingertips and she knows the clean strength that ripples through it, a thousand echoes of violence condensed into a straight, expedient line that sinks purposefully into flesh.

When she comes back to herself there's a dead squirrel at her feet, and her hands are shaking. _Better luck next time_ , Kate singsongs in her head, and Allison doesn't know what the next time will be but she's sure that it will wear a familiar, trusting, monstrous face.

-

Scott finds her in the woods, while she's practicing her kicks, which is no surprise because Allison tends to stay where she can be found. There's a dent in the bark of the tree in front of her, a shallow groove where her heel had dug in and peeled into the pale wood. He catches her foot on a downswing; just holding loosely, thumb stroking the bare skin of her ankle. Allison has to shake away from him, because the touch is too cloying, like he'd never seen her dig a knife into someone's back, like he doesn't know what she's capable of.

"Can I join you?" he asks while she rests her hands on her hips, pausing to breathe. She catches the glint of red in his eyes, not sure if he intended her to, before she grins and crooks a finger forward, like, _come on, then_.

Scott rushes her with everything he's got. She's been hit harder, but not by him, and it startles her for half a second before her body steps ahead of her brain. He falls heavily when she flips him over her shoulder, and the growl that slips between his teeth is definitely less than human. Or more. Allison stands ramrod straight while he pulls himself into a crouch, staring like a predator. Allison, though, stares like an Argent, and when a noise makes him waver, too distant for her to hear, she's ready to lunge, grunting when she lands her knee into his stomach, her hands hard iron on his shoulders.

Raw strength has its advantages, though, and when Scott gets his fingers around her wrists, leverages their weight so that he's on top of her—well, there's not a lot she can _do_ other than pant in his face.

His grip is tight enough to bruise. Scott has always, _always_ pulled his punches.

"Allison," he mutters, and he's not even talking to her, just reminding himself. His eyes are squeezed shut and he's hard against her stomach, more from the violence than her, and Allison fights his hold until she can pull him down to her breast, whisper, "I know, I know, I feel it, too."

"I don't even—I don't feel like a person anymore, only. Just this." He turns his face into her neck where she can feel the faintest graze of teeth, and for a wild, blood-soaked moment, she thinks _do it_. At least then she'd have a reason to act like a monster. But he changes his mind before he'd ever even considered it, nuzzles her instead.

"You're mine," is what she says, means it like a comfort and means it like a brand. "We're okay, we're good, I need—"

"Yeah," Scott nods, eyes full red when he looks up at her, "yeah, I can." He claws at her leggings, shreds them more than pulls them down starts licking her over her panties, hard enough that she gasps. She clutches at his hair and makes herself remember all the times they did this before, sunlight on her bed and quiet, whispered love.

She comes with her fingernails digging ridges into his skin, ignoring the parts of her that know exactly where his pulse is beating, that say, _you could do it. You could kill an alpha._

-

Isaac flits between her and Scott like a bird, now that Derek's gone.

The three of them don't spend time _together_. Isaac still lives with Scott, and she doesn't need to ask what they do when they're at home, not when she sees Scott's shirts hanging loose around Isaac's shoulders, when even she can smell Scott on him. He sits next to her in class, though, sometimes goes to the library with her, where there's just enough space between them to drive her insane, to want to press into the warmth of him to see if it would be enough to melt the chill settling over her bones. It's too obvious, too simple a temptation to even consider.

"Allison," he says, frame stark against the gray midmorning pouring through the window. "You know you can talk to me, right?"

His eyes are always so low, like he doesn't want her to see him looking without permission. Allison stares freely, watches him scratching nonsense onto his desk with his fingernail, brow furrowed too deeply to be idle. "What do you mean?" she breezes, hopes he doesn't notice the way her fingers tighten on her pen.

"I know it changed you," he continues. "You and Scott. He won't tell me, either, but." He glances up at her. "It's not a bad thing, to need an anchor." The way his eyes flicker to her mouth is unbearably sweet; she hates that her gut reaction is to flinch away from it.

"If I need to talk, I know who to go to," she says carefully, fitting her hand over his clenched fist. He softens instantaneously into her touch and Allison swallows the urge to strike, while he's distracted by the deceptive warmth of her palms.

Isaac hovers around her desk when the bell rings, to walk her to the cafeteria, but she shakes her head and smiles apologetically, waits for him to leave before she buries her face in her hands.

"He's still watching you." Allison hates herself for jumping, turns in her seat to glare, but Stiles just gazes levelly back at her from the corner of the room. Ever since they got back, he's been unnervingly stagnant; the never-ending catalogue of tics and twitches that comprise his physicality have all but vanished. He sits erect and still in his chair, eyes glassy and mirror-wide. "You gonna tell him?"

"Tell him what?" she manages. They've never been close, even at the best of times—Stiles was too _busy_ , too ready to lash out for her to feel comfortable around him—but the dispassionate force of his stare is enough to make her want to grab for her daggers. She tenses up her muscles, so he can see she's ready to spring; a battle stance.

He doesn't so much as blink at her. "How's your aunt, Allison?"

"How'd you sleep, Stiles?"

He doesn't answer her, which is disappointing. Allison's always looking for a reaction, lately. What he does is stand up and walk toward the door without acknowledging her, knuckles just barely brushing by her shoulder when he walks by. But it's enough to make her gasp, to freeze Stiles in his tracks: a white hot burst of violence cresting up under her skin, all the adrenaline and concentration of the hunt ( _and the kill_ , Kate whispers in her ear), undercut by a terror that isn't hers. It boils into a silent, animal scream in her chest, and Allison has to close her eyes to hide the look on her face. She doesn't open them until she hears Stiles' staggering breath fade, the door clicking shut behind him.

It feels like satisfaction.

-

Scott's got the door open before she even got a chance to knock. Allison's grateful for that, at least; she doesn't really want to explain to Melissa exactly which of the teenage boys under her roof she's romantically entangled with, and even less so her desire to cause them bodily harm. Scott's face is grave when he steps aside to let her in, face too sharp too look entirely human. When she darts a glance toward his hand on the doorknob, she can see the hint of a claw in his fingernails.

"He home?" she murmurs, stomping the familiar path toward the kitchen. There used to be countless afternoons where she leaned up against the counter here, Scott trying to make lunch for her and Stiles but getting distracted and pressing kisses to her neck, warm nights where they ate dinner with Melissa, windows open to let in the breeze. She remembers smiling. The memories still feel good to her, at least, even if the warmth that tightens around her chest is not the cool rush of pleasure, of calm that she's searching for.

"He's picking up my mom from the hospital," Scott says, following her and hoisting himself up onto the kitchen table with a smooth and bestial grace. "I told him I was busy."

"He didn't ask any questions?" Allison asks, eyebrow raised. Scott just gives her a small, blood-red smile in return. "Alpha knows best."

"Something like that," he shrugs. "You do know what he wants from us, right?" 

Isaac wants their nearness, Scott's approval, Allison's fierce, hard-won friendship, and above all, their love. "He wants to feel safe." 

"And you know we can't give him that."

She crosses her arms across her chest. "Then what do you suggest we do? He's not gonna just let us push him aside. We made sure of that a long time ago."

"That was before we knew—that was before."

"We're his anchors, you know," she says quietly. "And he wants to be ours."

"Maybe someday he will be." Scott presses the heels of his hands against his temples, then thinks better of it, grabs for her hand instead. The touch isn't as intense as it was in the woods, as it was with _Stiles_ , but she thinks maybe that's love, watering down the sweet rush of heat and strength and power, reminding her that there's a person in there, somewhere. "Just keep him at arm's length the best you can. We'll figure it out as we go, but, Allison, we can't hurt him."

"So what?" she asks, squeezing his hand in hers and letting her fingernails prick his skin. "We just keep hurting each other?"

"If we need to." He shrugs, then pulls her against him lightning-quick. "We can take it," he murmurs into her hair.

She wonders when they became the people who make those kind of judgments, but she doesn't say anything. Instead, she lets Scott's hot breath warm her neck, feels his touch echo through her body in a rush of urges, both hers and not. "Stiles can, too," he says, suddenly, pulling back and breaking her high. "But you could go a little easier on him."

"You heard that?" she asks, but of course he did. Acting like Scott doesn't permeate every aspect of her life in some small way is a lesson in futility.

"I always hear you," Scott tells her, looking down at the space between them guiltily. "Both of you." 

The thing that everyone forgets to say about anchors is they are always capable of drowning you.

-

It might have bothered her to hear her phone going off at two in the morning if she was actually sleeping. 

The reality of the situation is she almost stabs it, because that's what happens when you feel compelled to clean your dagger collection in the dead of night and a loud noise ruptures the careful silence of your work. She curses and sends her ring daggers skittering to the floor, spills a few drops of oil on her bent knees. Probably she shouldn't be handling knives when she's running on four hours of sleep, she thinks as she gropes around the nightstand for her phone, but she's starting to like the desperate edge she's developed alongside her insomnia. 

_cna you come ovr._ There's not even a question mark, like it's a foregone conclusion. She wouldn't have, before, when she might have been able to fool herself into believing that she was doing something nice, that she was helping a friend, but now it's as freeing as it is horrifying to acknowledge that she's in it for thrill, the hope that it's a veiled challenge. She thinks she might have been a good person once.

She's got her boots on and her keys in hand before it occurs to her that she never looked at the sender. It doesn't really matter; her blood pulls her forward, onward, away. 

All the lights are on when she pulls up to the house; Allison lets herself in. 

Stiles only gives a perfunctory glance up at her before he's hunched back over the kitchen counter, a cup of something steaming hot in his hands. Allison locks the door behind her and walks over cautiously. "Hey."

"Hey," he says. "Did I wake you?"

"Wasn't sleeping." She pulls up a barstool next to him. "You look like shit, Stiles."

"They let you kill werewolves with a mouth like that?" She blinks at him and he buries his face in his hands. "I know, I know, I'm off my game. I didn't actually call you over so we could exchange verbal abuses."

"So, physical abuses?" Allison says, hoping to God that it comes out like a joke. 

"Something like that." He looks up at her, black hole eyes shining grimly. "Could you stay with me?"

Allison blinks. "Like, here? Tonight?" 

"The nightmares—I woke up in the basement last night. With a screwdriver in my hand." Stiles' knuckles tighten around his mug, warm milk sloshing up around the edges. "I don't need someone to watch me. I need someone to hold me down."

Which. Allison can't fault his logic. "Why not Scott?"

"He cares too much."

"And you think I don't care at all."

"I think you're the kind of person who can do what needs to be done." Stiles' stare is hard and still, the opposite of what she expects from him. She finds herself missing the flickering eyes, the way his knee always bounced up against hers. Prey is always nervous. Predators aren't. "Am I wrong?"

Allison takes the mug from his hands, doesn't gasp at the shock his touch sends through her fingers. "Lead on."

-

"Stiles," Allison asks, very seriously. "Are we cuddling?"

"What?" says Stiles, looking over his shoulder at her. "This is not—do I need to explain the situation to you again? Because we were pretty clearly set on the violent, unemotional side of the physical contact spectrum."

"No, yeah, I got that part," she replies. There's a comfortable stretch in her shoulder from where her arm is pulled across Stiles' chest, keeping his hands trapped there, and her knees are tucked neatly into the backs of his. "I just happen to have been party to some cuddling and this feels awfully similar."

"I wasn't aware you were some kind of cuddling savant," Stiles grumbles. "You could hold me tighter. If that helps."

It does. She digs her fingers in between the peaks of his knuckles, feels the brittle bone shifting underneath her. Just touching him helps, frankly. There's the same rush of contentment she got from Scott, but with a bright, raw edge, desperation bursting into giddiness. It feels better when she drags her nails across his stomach, t-shirt bunching up under her palm as he leans back against her, breath stuttering. 

"Stiles," she says, questioningly. 

"It's fine. You're fine." His back is still tense, knots of finely corded muscle pressed to her middle. "I feel it, too, you know."

"I figured." Allison's voice sounds small in the indiscriminate darkness of his room. "What are the dreams like?"

"Disorienting. Terrifying. I don't really remember them, it's just—feelings." He exhales a slow, practiced breath. "There's always a door." 

"A door to what?" she asks. Stiles is quiet for a long time, until Allison feels his heartbeat slow to something almost normal under their clutched hands, and she listens to him breathe with her eyes open, counting imaginary flecks of light on the darkened ceiling. 

It's maybe a couple hours until he starts thrashing around. Allison doesn't sleep, but it's the most rest she's felt in ages, lulled into passivity by the rhythm of Stiles' pulse, thinking of nothing. At first he just sort of twitches, like there's a tickle running across his skin, but then the shakes come, and then he's full out fighting her, arms jutting wildly into the softness of her belly. 

He slips her grip for a few moments, but then she catches hold of his wrists again, chants, "Stiles, Stiles, _Stiles_ ," until it's clear he's not responding, then she climbs on top of him, wrestles him down until she has enough leverage to slam him into the headboard. 

"Jesus fuck ow," Stiles whines, going limp underneath her. "Why are you strong enough to do that? Are you a mutant? Holy mother of _ow_."

Allison laughs, blood singing in her ears. She squeezes his wrists once more before she falls beside him on the bed, breathless and alive. Stiles leaves his arms above his head, wrists slack but aloft, and nudges her with his elbow. "Thanks, you know."

Allison twists on her side so that her thigh is still splayed across his legs, so that she can look up at him, and she feels light and shaky and wired. "I could—more," she offers, running her leg higher against his lap. He makes a sharp, high noise in his throat when she grazes his dick, half-hard already, and she smiles. It feels cruel on her face. 

"Allison," he says, swallowing around her name.

"Only if you want." She waits; it takes an inordinate amount of discipline to stay still, but she doesn't move until she feels the force of his nod, until he shivers and says, " _Yes_ , yes yes. Oh fuck." 

"That's good," she croons, leans away enough to get her hand down the front of his pants, pull him off slow and easy, even though he's babbling nonsense and arching up so much that she has to fight the urge to hold him down, and then she doesn't, just straddles his thighs and wraps one firm hand around his hip, grasping elatedly for control, for as much as he'll give her. 

He says her name when he comes, and then, inevitably, Scott's; he tries to thrust up into her hand but she keeps her grip clamped firm, his hips glued to the mattress.

Her boots are still on. 

"God," he says, staring dazedly at her while she wipes her hand on his pants. "Are you—I could do you. If you want me to."

She considers it briefly, thinks about crawling up his body and perching herself atop his jaw. "I'm fine," she says instead, and she is, albeit becoming less fine at a dramatic rate. She thinks it was okay until he started talking about Scott, reminded her that there was another piece in this puzzle, and now all she can think about is how this is probably the first time anyone's ever touched him, how she's high off power, not sex, not desire, but control. 

She wonders how old Derek was, when Kate happened.

"Hey," Stiles says, running his bony fingers up her arm. It feels as good as before, but it makes her sick to her stomach, now, and it's no one's fault but her own. She grabs his hand, doesn't kiss it but nips at his thumb when he runs it across her bottom lip. She figures it's probably as close as they're going to get. 

"It's late," she says, shifting off him to sit with her back against the headboard. 

"Early," he contradicts gently.

"What time does your dad's shift end?"

He glances at the clock, blinking blue numbers staring back at him "About fifteen minutes ago. He won't—"

"Stiles," she says, as kindly as she's capable of, "please do not try to tell me that your dad doesn't check in on you when he gets home." 

"He wouldn't mind," Stiles protests, but there are headlights painting stripes of light across his floor and Allison's already got the window open, says, "I'll see you at school," before she vaults smoothly and silently onto the roof of the garage, waits until the sheriff shuts the door behind him to go back to her car. 

_Good girl_ , Kate says, staring at her in the rear view. Allison clutches the steering wheel white-knuckled and will not scream. 

-

Her dad's sitting in the living room when she walks in. "Late night?" he asks.

"Something like that." The hall clock's reading seven-thirty. "I need to go change."

He rubs at his temples, like he's exhausted. Like he's the one that died. She'd kill herself a hundred times over for him, for _family_ , but it's hard to remember when he looks at her like that. Or maybe she only remembers it when he looks at her like that. "You know I trust your judgment, but with everything that's happened, I need you to let me know that you're okay, at the very _least_."

The only time Allison ever broke curfew when her mother was alive was when she snuck out to meet Scott. Even Kate knew to pick her battles on that one. She asked once, in freshman year, if she could tag along with a bunch of kids from the school band to a midnight release of some movie she didn't care about. That earned her a few specific twist of the mouth, and a terse, "If you think that's how your time is best spent."

Allison ended up going to bed at nine, and spent the next day doing target practice. She learned a new draw, and Victoria had smiled. 

"Lighten up," she says now, doesn't let the rawness of her throat detract from her breezy, bitter cadence. "No one died."

Her dad stares at her like he doesn't recognize her. He grabs her sleeve as she walks past, and Allison waits, for a moment, thinking that he's going to say something else, before she realizes she's checking her for weapons. She can place his expression, now, a familiar mixture of love and fear, the same face he wore when they went to Gerard's for Thanksgiving, when he watched Kate braiding her hair. 

"Do you even miss her at all?" she asks quietly. 

"Allison." He squeezes her wrist—tenderly, not threateningly. "Your mother—"

"That's not," she says, jerking her arm away, "what I meant."

Her knife's in her boot. Bully for him.

-

She gets to school ten minutes early, not bothering to shower and only changing clothes inasmuch as yoga pants and a sweatshirt constitute clothes. As soon as she makes it to homeroom, every non-human in the room turns to stare at her. Scott sidles in behind her while she's pulling her deer in the headlights routine, and he wrinkles his nose up quizzically.

"I didn't have time to shower. Don't," she says sharply when he opens his mouth. 

Lydia frowns prettily at her when she slumps into her seat. "What," she asks.

"You feel," says Lydia, pondering while she tucks a loose thread of hair behind Allison's ear, "like more than yourself." 

"You mean like someone else." Allison's eyes flick upward when the teacher walks in, but keeps scratching her pen into the desk. 

"Like more," Lydia repeats, the bell ringing over her words. 

Allison looks down at her handiwork, a crude reimagining of Kate's necklace, the family seal. Her wolf looks like it's laughing, her arrows bent and useless. 

There are people Allison was built on—Victoria, Chris, Kate, Scott, Lydia—and there are the people that broke her. She's having trouble finding where the line of separation falls, when she stopped growing and started hardening, bark sealing old wounds. Isaac catches her eye in the hallway, stricken, and Allison acknowledges that fragile is not always a used-to-be. 

"They know they're in the middle of the hallway, right?" Lydia says, appearing at her elbow. "Like, in public?"

Allison looks past Isaac's hunched shoulders, follows Lydia's gaze through the mass of shuffling bodies. Scott's at Stiles' locker, hand wrapped around the back of Stiles' neck, their foreheads pressed together. Allison watches them and feels a lack, the empty echo of the pulse of comfort she sees running up the arch of Stiles' spine.

Her locker door slams so hard it bounces back and almost hits her in the face. Lydia laughs, until she doesn't. 

-

"I'm not mad," Stiles murmurs to her in chemistry. He sits at the table behind her, and his lab partner is shooting vicious glances their way. Allison measures out her potassium-whatever without looking over her shoulder to acknowledge him. 

"That's nice," she says, when the phantom of his weight lurking behind her becomes too much to ignore. "I don't remember asking."

"Are we back to this?"

"Did we ever leave it?" 

"I'm not going to break," he spits bitterly. "That's—Scott's the one who's supposed to worry about me."

"I'm not worried," she lies. It's easier to be hard, easier than admitting her worry is an act of retaliation, an attempt at holding on to whatever she used to be. 

"I can hurt you as much as you can hurt me."

"Yeah?" She peeks back at him disaffectedly. "Prove it."

-

Lydia stays over with her more often than not, now. Allison tried to avoid her, once she finally grasped that she was really in this deep, but Lydia Martin is a force of nature. She'd have an easier time outrunning a hurricane. Once she's at the door Allison has to let her in, just like she has to notice the way Lydia flinches when she sees the bags under her eyes.

The pretense is studying, like always, but Lydia's chatter about physics turns into chatter about teachers turns into a treatise on pack behavior that she's clearly been putting together from the bestiary pages. Allison lets her draw spirals with her silver pen over the milk-pale skin of her forearm, watches the ink spill like mercury over the lines of her veins. "You're shaking," Lydia tells her gently, running warm fingers over the inside of her wrist.

"I'm fine," Allison insists, fervently ignoring the jittering pen in her other hand. "Keep talking?"

Lydia's disapproval is razor sharp, but she keeps drawing. "I was looking up different species of wolves online to see which one best compares to werewolves—that's assuming that all werewolves share the same mutations as the ones in Beacon Hills, which I'm not even remotely convinced of—and anyway, it's been impossible, because they're a phenotypical mess, and their social behaviors could be traced to any number of species just in the western US—the methods of dominance, the formation of the pack, the treatment of the sick or injured—"

"How?" Allison asks, suddenly enough that Lydia startles and her hand slips, elegant curlicues dissolving into a jagged line down her palm. "How do they treat their sick?"

"Well, you know that already, Buffy the Werewolf Slayer." Lydia raises an eyebrow. "The lone wolf dies. Either the pack takes care of it or." She punctuates with a shrug, shaping the line on Allison's hand into a blooming branch.

"And what if the whole pack is sick?" Her voice is flat, question hanging limply in the air.

"Then," Lydia says carefully, capping her pen and lacing her fingers through Allison's. "I guess they have to take care of each other." Lydia's palm is flush against hers, wrists and elbows in a tangle of too-close and bent-wrong, a sacrifice for proximity.

"Or you die together," Allison says. When Lydia pulls her hand away her arm is stained with stardust. There's something cold and fascinating about it, but then she can't see because Lydia's hugging her too tight, and Allison is reminded that for all her edges Lydia's skin is still tender and whole.

Allison dreams about Isaac, about blue-glow of him in the moonlight, and she knows it's not worth pretending that she wasn't remembering the feel of her knives sinking into his flesh long before Kate ever showed up. She gasps herself awake, flailing out with her arms until she feels the reassurance of cold metal under her pillow. Lydia is sleeping beside her, undisturbed, and Allison is sobered by the gentle heave of her chest, puts away their books and drapes a blanket over her and tries not to hear Kate saying, _it could have been her_.

When Lydia leaves in the morning she pushes Allison's hair out of her face and presses a kiss to her forehead, and Allison has to wonder if Lydia can feel her, cold as a corpse under the swan song of her pulse.

-

She doesn't need to check the calendar to know that the full moon's coming. Sometimes Allison thinks it draws hunters as much as it does the wolf; her senses sharpen, the closer it gets, and she walks taller, bones pulled taught in preparation. 

It's only habit to go looking for Scott. She's spent so many nights watching him change, waiting in the woods while he runs it out, stroking the sweat off his brow after, the smell of earth and grass and blood coming off him in waves. It's late afternoon when she gets to Deaton's, the sun riding heavy and low over the building. Scott's been covering more and more shifts, since the nemeton woke up, and being half an emissary apparently became more work; she can't remember the last time she saw Deaton at his day job.

But he's there when Allison walks in, hunched over the exam table with a book, a loose air vent rattling overhead. She doesn't bother trying to guess what he's reading; she can tell from a distance that it's not even remotely English, and her Latin's been getting better since Lydia started helping her, but it's nowhere near book-level. She clears her throat.

"Ms. Argent," Deaton says, smiling warmly at her. He snaps his book shut and leans back on his stool. "How goes the hunt?"

"I don't do that anymore," she says with an immediacy that speaks of guilt. She swallows down a breath to calm herself, and tries again. "I'm looking for Scott." 

Deaton just raises an eyebrow at her, like, _isn't that what I said_? Allison's fists clench of her own accord. He notices, because he notices everything, like he's spent years learning how to see the knife in the dark, the sharp tooth. "Is something the matter, Allison?" he asks. 

"Just passing by," she says lightly. "How about you?" 

He gestures to his book; a small sprinkling of dust rains down when he movies it. "The usual daily grind, that's all."

"My aunt didn't really care for emissaries," says Allison. It's the truth, though she can't remember when she heard it. Kate was always talking—Allison always figured the one side-effect of always knowing the right thing to say was never knowing when to stop. But Kate didn't talk about hunting, not the way she talked about cars and allergies and urban legends. Radio silence for seventeen years.

"Oh no?" 

"Nope." Allison shakes her head. She grazes her knuckles across the cold metal of the examination table. "She said they were as bad as wolves, or worse." 

"How so?"

"A wolf doesn't choose the bite." 

Deaton looks at her, eyes hard beneath the worn, inviting lines of his skin. "And what does your aunt say now, Allison?" 

The same, but louder: _fuck the code. burn them all._ The smell of gasoline is asphyxiating, second in disturbance only to the rattle of the loose vent cover. Allison tilts her head to the side, smiles quizzically. "That's silly, Doctor. My aunt is dead." 

"You're right, of course. A slip of the tongue."

"It's fine." Allison darts a glance toward the door in spite of herself. "Scott?" 

"Oh, I'm sure he's not far. I gave him the night off, but it didn't seem to me like he was heading home." The air vent gives a particularly loud clatter, and Allison winces, digs her fingernails into her palm to keep from grabbing for her daggers. Deaton glances at her, then back at the ceiling. "Yes, it's quite obnoxious, isn't it? I keep trying to fix it, but somehow it just keeps coming loose."

"Maybe you should call a professional," Allison says, trying for levity. 

Deaton hums in acknowledgement. "I usually have music playing. When the noise gets unbearable, I've found that the best way to cope with it is to just drown it out with something louder." And just like that, they're not talking about air vents anymore. 

"Is it," Allison says, clearing her throat. "I should go." 

"Until next time, Ms. Argent," he calls, as the door swings shut behind her. 

She heads to the woods next, and finds Scott almost immediately. He's knelt in front of the trunk of a tree (not _the_ tree, she notes with no small degree of relief), back heaving like he's breathing hard. Allison keeps her footsteps careful, cautious, like he'll dart off rabbit-like if she makes any sudden moves. When she finally makes it across the clearing to lay a hand on his shoulder, his forehead is flat against the bark, muscles tight and shaking. His claws are out, buried deep in the trunk of the tree so that his fingers are bent past the point of strain and into excruciation. 

Allison stares at his hands, envious. 

-

"I want to try something," she says as last bell rings, and doesn't elaborate. When she looks in the rear view on the way home, Scott and Stiles are behind her in the jeep; it's not easy to keep the smug smile off her face, so she doesn't even try. They park on the street, follow her up and stand behind her in the elevator without saying a word. Scott's hand brushes hers next to the support bar and her eyes flutter shut a little, a chill of happiness sparking at her fingertips. 

"Your dad?" Stiles says, finally breaking the shell of silence that's settled around them like glass. 

"Out," she replies simply, locks the door behind her. "Follow me."

Scott sits down on her bed as comfortably and easily as he does everything; he's been there enough times, at any rate. Stiles lingers in the doorway, hands deep in his pockets. "So what are we doing?"

"This." She wraps her fingers around Stiles' wrist, as loosely as she can, but he lets her drag him into the bed, into Scott, lets her guide his arms around Scott's waist until he falls down flat alongside them, Allison spooned up against Stiles while his forehead rests against Scott's collarbone. Allison inhales sharply as soon as she's touching skin, three sets of fingers jumbled up on Scott's hip. Stiles' body seizes up and Scott laughs, shocked and nervous, lips grazing Stiles' hair.

"Hey," he says. "Whoa."

"Hey," Allison responds dutifully, and she's grinning, too, squeezing their hands tighter while the feeling runs up and down her body, a sharp, tingling heat that hits her like an upper and a downer all at once, body going lax but mind on fire and alight. 

She feels like laughing. She feels like she could remember how to cry. 

"Stiles," Scott is saying, and yes, he's still shivering between them, stiff as a board. "Stiles, you okay?"

"I'm—yeah," he says, swallowing. "Peachy keen. It's just—a lot."

"But it's good," Allison says, noses at the back of his neck. "Right?"

He leans back into her, sighing. "I don't really have the brain function to tell you how much," he admits, and Allison laughs. "But I feel like—I want you to be closer. Both of you, I want to—"

"Stiles," Scott says, voice tight when Stiles arches against him. Allison peers up nosily; Scott's hard, lip tugged between his teeth and hips held rigidly still.

"I want," Stiles is still saying. "Can I—God, Scott, I wanna touch you, I just—"

"Do it," Allison says at the exact same time as Scott, and Stiles shudders, goes, "fuck, that's not even fair," while he pulls Scott's zipper down. Allison closes her eyes and listens, and she gets it, too, because she can't keep her hands to herself, keeps running them under Stiles' shirt, over his belly, to tangle with his fingers on Scott's cock and then back again. She's half-heartedly grinding herself against Stiles' ass, but with no real intent; the constant, euphoric buzz swimming in her blood is enough to keep her panting and sated. 

When Scott comes she feels it, a tripartite echo through her bones. 

"Stiles," Scott murmurs after, still a little dazed, "let me do you, come on."

"I'm good, man," Stiles says, kisses Scott's jaw instead. His body is falling slack against Allison, more weight that he's ever let settle on her before. "I think I just want to go to sleep. I feel like going to sleep," he repeats, astonished.

"Then sleep," Allison murmurs, pressing her lips against his shoulder. She reaches out until she finds Scott's hip and clutches tightly, holds them both close against her. 

Somewhere Kate is screaming, but it flickers like a radio out of range.

-

"It's never going to go away, is it," she says softly. Scott's fingers are tangled up in hers and Stiles is dozing on the bleacher below them, head pillowed on their thighs. It's too cold to be spending free periods at the lacrosse field, but here they are, the afternoon sun burning through their jackets while the wind bites at their face. 

"Probably not," Scott answers. "But neither are we."


End file.
